ESP8266 Community Forum

So this chip wants me to buy tons of them, and put them all over my house. But then I started thinking about how to power them. Ideally we need a small 120VAC power supply with some extra room to put the hardware. Barring that, anyone know of a some cheap 120VAC power supplies from aliexpress or such that would work with the esp?

For PSUs, it seems like Martin Harizanov http://harizanov.com/2015/02/wifi-thermostat-with-weekly-scheduler has the right idea with his use of the Vigotronix PCB mountable modules. They're not as cheap as the eBay/China bare specials, but they do seem to be much more robust and well made (do a search for PSUs on Pete Scargill's site for info on his exoeriences http://tech.scargill.net/). I'm thinking here projects which you might be mounting permanently in out-of-the-way places and which would be powered 24/7. I'd certainly be willing to pay a little extra for something which wouldn't burn my house down. The problem for me (and a lot of other folks) is not the purchase price though, it's the postage. I'm not in Europe or the U.S., so any suggestions on where to get these PSUs (or a good quality equivalent) without paying an arm and a leg for postage would be welcome.

For enclosures, someone recently posted a link in the "projects" section to an eBay seller of battery-powered phone chargers as a good, low cost source of ready-made enclosures of the general size and shape that would be useful for small ESP8266 projects. That sounded like a good idea to me, as those chargers also have some electronics and hardware which could also be re-used (battery clips, USB-charger electronics and connectors).

CptanPanic wrote:So this chip wants me to buy tons of them, and put them all over my house. But then I started thinking about how to power them. Ideally we need a small 120VAC power supply with some extra room to put the hardware. Barring that, anyone know of a some cheap 120VAC power supplies from aliexpress or such that would work with the esp?

I have purchased a bunch of these I want to test out. it looks like it puts 4v out, so that likely needs to be taken care of. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2309

CptanPanic wrote:So this chip wants me to buy tons of them, and put them all over my house. But then I started thinking about how to power them.

- You have much, much choice in cheap ready-made (and legal) AC to 5v USB power supplies, then you just need a 3v3 regulator close to the ESP8266. That's the route I'd go.

- if your house has some sort of DC standby or emergency power (eg 12 battery for alarm, pumps, etc) you could wire to that, again with local 3v3 regs at the device.

of course, lots of choices for case. I haven't got a favourite yet.